A Man had two Gamecocks in his poultry-yard. One day by chance he found a tame Partridge for sale. He purchased it and brought it home to be reared with his Gamecocks. When the Partridge was put into the poultry-yard, they struck at it and followed it about, so that the Partridge became grievously troubled and supposed that he was thus evilly treated because he was a stranger. Not long afterwards he saw the Cocks fighting together and not separating before one had well beaten the other. He then said to himself, “I shall no longer distress myself at being struck at by these Gamecocks, when I see that they cannot even refrain from quarreling with each other.”
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Aesop was an ancient Greek storyteller, traditionally believed to have lived around 620–564 BCE, whose fables have been retold and adapted across the world for over two millennia. His stories typically use animals to illuminate human behaviour with sharp moral clarity. "The Gamecocks and the Partridge" is a compact example of his style, using a single observed moment to shift a character's entire perspective.
